Then the ones who pleased the Lord will ask, "When did we give you something to eat or drink? When did we welcome you as a stranger or give you clothes to wear or visit you while you were sick or in jail?"The King will answer, "Whenever you did it for any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did it for me." .......Matthew 25

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Home with a view...

There are some very picturesque spots in rural Cambodia. This is one of them. The peaceful and beautiful pastoral setting of this scene with the quaint little hut hides the abject poverty of many of the people living there. The flat lands in the back ground appear barren because it is actually very low lying and much of it is actually beneath the water line. During the rainy period, large swathes of the land will be under water. That's the reason why the hut is on stilts.

We came here because the roof of this hut had fallen in and needed repairs. The single room hut housed a family of six. The family could not afford to fix the roof, so the NTU students were there to help.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the structure of the hut was too weak to support the new zinc roofing the students had planned to install. We understood that the family had gone round to borrow money so that they could install stronger columns that could take the weight of the zinc roof. We all felt rather uncomfortable with the realization that our attempts to help the family would actually put the family under the burden of a sizeable debt. Then and there, the students decided to take up a collection among themselves so that they could contribute to the cost of re-structuring the house support for the installation of the new roof.

The students' spontaneous generosity under such unexpected conditions touched us very much.